The Mango Mall Job
by misskikimarie
Summary: "Beneath the sweat and grime, I sniff the scent of mangos on my skin, and I almost wish that I could just pull it away, but it's still there, even when I try to scrap and scratch it off." Series of vignettes. Loosely based off of the House on Mango Street (by Sandra Cisneros). Rated T for some implied themes not suitable for young children.


_**The Mango Mall Job**_

_**LunarEclipse22428**_

_**Vignette: Mangos Mark My Hands**_

_Fandom: How to Rock_

_Genre(s): Angst/Friendship (hints of romance)_

_Rating: T_

_Central Character/Protagonist: Stevie Rena Baskara_

_Shipping(s): (if any) Zevie, Kavin, and Grelson_

_Disclaimer: I do not (sadly) own How to Rock or any of the characters. I do, however, own the ideas for these vignettes and any original characters I decide to throw in. However, the idea for this story comes from the novel _The House on Mango Street_ by Sandra Cisneros. _

**AN: Just to be clear, since this "story" is a series of vignettes, it will not technically feature an actual storyline and may bounce back and forth between happenings. A vignette is a brief piece of writing describing a scene or picture that typically has some sort of moral lesson or allows one to get a deeper understanding of a character's personality or life. They will connect and typically be centered around Stevie, but please do not report this. It may not be the typical type of story, but it is a form of writing that will allow me, as a fan of How to Rock, to explore the stories and personalities of the characters as well as a new style for myself to try and work with, just as any other story or poem would. This is simply a _different style of writing_. Thank you.**

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At home, I see a lot of different people. I do at school too and at work as well. Something that has always intrigued me though is the hands of the people that I meet. They're all so different. My hands are the kind that I try to keep away from people because they start to clam up a bit when people conceal them with their own palms. They slip and slide, and I can almost hear the echoing thoughts of the other person thinking that they feel like a fish or something and them simply hoping that, like an animal drenched in water, they will slip out of their palms at once. Usually, people don't grab at my hands though. They're typically too intimidated by the fists that I can easily form with them, and they run off, but they do still give me problems when I'm playing the bass, and I have to slide my fingers up and down the neck to different frets. They slip and slide even more like they're flopping around helplessly on the shore, and I have to be careful and make sure that it doesn't affect my playing so much that I end up ruining a song or two during band practices.

Then there are people with the kind of skin on their palms that makes it seem like you can peel away at them for hours and hours and only hope that there would still be more underneath. The layers come off one by one, and you don't want to admit that you're a little creeped out as the skin becomes thinner and thinner but continues to peel and peel away no matter how much you hope for the pulling to cease. I know some people like that. Zander has hands like that, and Nelson does too, but Kevin is like me with the sweaty butterfingers, and Kacey uses so much moisturizer on her naturally dry skin that she doesn't even have much to worry about anymore besides the distinct smell that her lotion leaves behind and the lack of subtlety it provides.

There are also people with freckles speckling the skin on the back of their hands and people with calluses that are so hard on their fingers that they can push their fingernails against them and listen to the sound of a small but satisfying click. There are people with blisters and bruises and people with bandages and bumps. I have the calluses, but my entire family besides my dad has the bruises and bandages. He only has the bandages from when he accidentally hits the wrong thing and hits it much too hard. We have the bandages from those times when he hits hard enough, which is often, but I know that his hands, especially when he tries to help us treat our bruises and bumps, are kind and usually gentle. They just have muscles beneath them, and they are rather impulsive. His muscles get frustrated, and they yell out sometimes, so his knuckles clench into that same fist that I give people when they get too close to me, but his can't stop their selves from slapping and slamming into everything and anything in sight.

I don't complain about it to anyone because I know that he doesn't mean it. That's what my mom has said ever since it started, and my older brothers have told me a million times as well, so I tell my two younger brothers, James and even little baby Henry, that as well. He hasn't hit Henry before, but he still needs to know about the hands. Hands can tell a lot about people, but his are still too small and slender for me to be able to tell anything about who he might grow up to be. I can only hope that he won't have the same loud muscles beneath them as my father, but I don't know what else to hope for. I could hope for him to have the unnaturally supple hands of Kacey, but hers also smell of strong, artificial scents, and I could wish for him to have fishy hands like mine, but I want people to be able to take his hands into theirs and hold them tightly without any regrets of letting sweat spread onto their hands from his. I guess that I hope that he'll start to show the signs of the peeling skin, so I can gently pull off that layer and see what might be lying underneath it.

As I walk into the bathroom and lift the apron I have on with the familiar, vibrant, and vivid fruit displayed on the front, my hand brushes very lightly against my face, and beneath the sweat and grime, I sniff the scent of mangos on my skin, and part of me wishes that _I _could just pull it away, but it's still there even when I try to scrape my fingernails against it and scratch it off. All that happens is I chipp a bit of the black nailpolish that I borrowed from Kacey, so I stop and just look at my hands, displaying them on the cold and blank side of the sink in the room. My olive fingertips warm the surface and glisten, and I notice that I have some fading bruises stretched out so far that my bandaids don't even completely cover them, but there are also a few splatters of juice from smoothies, and I try to wash them away, but that doesn't work either. The scent is there even after I use my fingers and fingernails to scrub in the soap and water as hard as I can. It remains, it always has remained, and it seems like it always will remain. Sighing, I leave the mango shop and the mall with that smell still emanating from me. It's like my entire aura is orange and smelly and sweaty, and, I guess, in some weird way, that does just spell out Stevie to me. Malls and mangos and slips and sweat and Stevie.

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**This isn't my best work, but it's one of my first times writing like this, so please be gentle... I know it may seem boring, but I tried to put a lot of figurative language in there because that's a big part of writing vignettes most of the time. Most of it was alliteration and repitition, but I hope that that made it flow a little better and sound a little better too. Also, I'd appreciate if you left a review maybe? I'd love you forever, darlings. :3 Anyway, stay classy, and I hope that you enjoyed this... If not, I just hope that you don't report it. Thank you!**


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